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Stand & Deliver: The Autobiography
by Adam Ant
320pp, Sidgwick & Jackson, £18.99

Adam Ant tells the story of a life mapped out in chart positions in his autobiography Stand & Deliver. Fame takes its toll on the unwary, says Holly Johnson.

Holly Johnson

Sat 14 Oct 2006

This book begins with a suicide attempt by a Stuart Goddard lost in a teenage marriage and living with his in-laws. Being Stuart Goddard hadn’t been much fun, and to be honest neither was wading through the chapters of his childhood, as is so often the case with autobiographies — the highlights being taking Paul McCartney’s dog for a walk when Stuart’s mother worked for him as a daily, and seeing Stanley Spencer tramping about Cookham on visits to relatives in the village.

There were times when being Adam Ant wasn’t much fun either. The last appearance that many will remember was his arrival in 2002 at the Old Bailey, looking less the Dandy Highwayman than a middle aged Al Capone, almost unrecognisable to his legion of fans or “Antpeople”. He pleaded not guilty, on the basis of temporary insanity, to charges of damaging property, actual bodily harm and possession of an imitation firearm arising from an incident in January 2002 when, dressed in stetson and camouflage jacket, it was alleged that he broke a window of a pub in north London, injuring one man, and threatening another with an imitation revolver. He pleaded guilty to affray and was given a 12-month community rehabilitation order.

The police caught up with him soon after. The day after this incident he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He telephoned the tabloids from the “Alice In Wonderland Ward” at the Royal Free Hospital claiming he had been abducted by the police.

He was 51 and suffering from bipolar affective disorder — previously called manic depression — a condition believed to affect up to 5% of the population, including a high concentration of those who work in the performing arts. The incident put an end to plans to revive his career by headlining on a tour called Here and Now, a nostalgia fest of 1980s pop stars.

My own first memories of Adam stem from my teenage years in Liverpool, when I went to see Derek Jarman’s paean to punk, Jubilee. Named after the Queen’s 25th jubilee, it starred the style icon Jordan, a beehive blonde who came to fame working in Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s fetishist shop Sex (later Seditionaries), which made the King’s Road into a mecca for the hip young gunslingers of the day.

(cont.)
In lesser roles were Toyah Wilcox and Adam. Adam, billed as “Kid”, looked good in his Seditionaries bondage jacket and eye make-up, singing about “Plastic Surgery” to a future pop mogul in an X Factor-style audition. The film was slated by the music press as “hippie trash” but the accompanying soundtrack album was to provide Adam with his first release.

The part of the book that covers this period, before he became a bona fide pop star, was for me the most interesting. The film’s subplot of Good Queen Bess travelling back and forward in time was an idea that gained momentum on the London creative scene. Westwood was soon to launch her pirate collection, and Adam says that he was asked by McLaren to model this new look but declined, preferring his own look — a historical military jacket hired from costumiers Berman & Nathan.

Whether McLaren actually managed Adam and the Ants in a Colonel Tom Parker-type 50/50 deal or was just paid a consultancy fee for ideas to help them is unclear. Adam writes at one point: “We needed to get £1,000 for Malcolm (he was opening a new shop with Vivienne)”, which seems very odd — the band bankrolling the “manager”. The story that McLaren “set up” Adam, resulting in the other members of the Ants leaving to form what was to become Bow Wow Wow, has become part of the mythology of punk and the continuing industry that surrounds it.

Finding himself without a band, Adam approached guitarist and fellow T Rex and Roxy Music fan Marco Pirroni, who had previously played with the Models. This songwriting partnership was to spawn the big hits that made Adam and the Ants a household name, from “Dog Eat Dog” (October 1980) — the title taken from a speech by Margaret Thatcher — through to “Puss N’ Boots” (October 1983). With their lavish videos, story-boarded by Adam (one guest-starred Diana Dors), they captured the “kids” faster than the Pied Piper. Perhaps it was all more end-of-the-pier panto than commedia dell’ arte, as Adam would have it. But that criticism only really mattered to Adam’s ex-Hornsey College of Art student ego. He always had his eye on the main chance and went for the commercial jugular, choosing to perform on ITV’s Cannon and Ball show rather than the more prestigious Morecambe and Wise on the BBC, due to the former’s higher viewing figures.

He measured out the following years of his life in chart positions, manically designing his stage shows and new looks themed to his product. A merry-go-round of promotional interviews and “puresex” with fans took its toll on his relationships (particularly the one with then drama student Amanda Donohoe), as well as on his physical and mental health. The inevitable year out of the country to avoid tax and the resultant loss of profile in his core market signaled the end of Antmania.

Being six years younger and not part of the Antpeople demographic, I had no idea that Adam had been so successful. His brand of slightly camp Englishness — principal boy rather than sex god — did not travel as successfully across the Atlantic as, say, Billy Idol (who, despite being part of the same Bromley contingent that hung around Sex, is conspicuously absent from these pages). Then came the LA years, a heart-sinking round of acting classes and villain roles in B movies and TV shows; affairs with actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Heather Graham, stalkers and frequent transatlantic flights. It was in the showbiz capital of psychotherapy that he was eventually admitted to Cedars Sinai hospital for a short while before returning to the UK. The series of unfortunate events continued with his father’s arrest for interfering with a young boy, and then another failed relationship, this — significantly — with the mother of his daughter.

It’s incredible that Adam eventually had to be arrested and sectioned before he got a real handle on his condition.

(cont.)
Perhaps his earning capacity and work ethic provided insulation, and rationalising his behaviour as “eccentric” to outsiders was enough to paper over the cracks. I just hope that this book provided him with a chance to gain some perspective and that being wheeled out on a book tour doesn’t prove too taxing.

Photographs on the internet show him at a book-signing looking more like his old self, leaner and in pirate headscarf. “Antpeople” turned up in droves, apparently. He’s hoping to record again. I can’t help thinking, though, that his drive and ambition could be easily exploited by those who care more about making money than about his welfare. He famously sang that “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of”; that may be so, but it really is best avoided.

Holly Johnson was the singer with Frankie Goes to Hollywood